The Washing Machine
by CrackonKappacumbers
Summary: "Shizu-chan, I wish you'd look at the wash machine." "What's wrong with it?" "I don't know." "Well, then." "I just want you to look at it, is all, or call a psychologist in to look at it." "What would a psychologist want with a washing machine?" - the kappalord C:


**I don't know.**

"Shizu-chan, I wish you'd look at the wash machine."

"What's wrong with it?"

"I don't know."

"Well, then."

"I just want you to look at it, is all, or call a psychologist in to look at it."

"What would a psychologist want with a washing machine?"

"You know very well what he'd want." Izaya paused in the middle of the kitchen and watched the stove busy humming to itself, making supper for four.

"It's just that the washing machine is different now than it was."

"All right, let's have a look." They walked down the hall of their soundproofed Happylife Home, which had cost them thirty thousand dollars installed, this house which clothed and fed and rocked them to sleep and played and sang and was good to them.

Their approach sensitized a switch somewhere and the nursery light flicked on when they came within ten feet of it. Similarly, behind them, in the halls, lights went on and off as they left them behind, with a soft automaticity.

"Well," said Shizou Heiwajima. They stood on the thatched floor of the washing machine. It was forty feet across by forty feet long and thirty feet high; it had cost half again as much as the rest of the house.

"But nothing's too good for our children," Shizuo had said. The washing machine was silent. It was empty as a jungle glade at hot high noon. The walls were blank and two dimensional.

Now, as Shizuo and Izaya stood in the center of the room, the walls began to purr and recede into crystalline distance, it seemed, and presently an African veldt appeared, in three dimensions, on all sides, in color reproduced to the final pebble and bit of straw.

The ceiling above them became a deep sky with a hot yellow sun. Shizou Heiwajima felt the perspiration start on his brow.

"Let's get out of this sun," he said. "This is a little too real. But I don't see anything wrong."

"Wait a moment, you'll see," said Izaya. Now the hidden odorophonics were beginning to blow a wind of odor at the two people in the middle of the baked veldtland.

The hot straw smell of lion grass, the cool green smell of the hidden water hole, the great rusty smell of animals, the smell of dust like a red paprika in the hot air. And now the sounds: the thump of distant antelope feet on grassy sod, the papery rustling of vultures.

A shadow passed through the sky. The shadow flickered on Shizuo's upturned, sweating face.

"Filthy creatures," he heard his wife say.

"The vultures."

"You see, there are the lions, far over, that way. Now they're on their way to the water hole. They've just been eating," said Izaya.

"I don't know what."

"Some animal." Shizuo put his hand up to shield off the burning light from his squinted eyes. "A zebra or a baby giraffe, maybe."

"Are you sure?" Izaya sounded peculiarly tense.

"No, it's a little late to be sure," he said, amused.

"Nothing over there I can see but cleaned bone, and the vultures dropping for what's left."

"Did you hear that scream?" he asked.

'No."

"About a minute ago?"

"Sorry, no." The lions were coming. And again Shizou Heiwajima was filled with admiration for the mechanical genius who had conceived this room.

A miracle of efficiency selling for an absurdly low price. Every home should have one. Oh, occasionally they frightened you with their clinical accuracy, they startled you, gave you a twinge, but most of the time what fun for everyone, not only your own sons, but for yourself when you felt like a quick jaunt to a foreign land, a quick change of scenery.

Well, here it was!

And here were the lions now, fifteen feet away, so real, so feverishly and startlingly real that you could feel the prickling fur on your hand, and your mouth was stuffed with the dusty upholstery smell of their heated pelts, and the yellow of them was in your eyes like the yellow of an exquisite French tapestry, the yellows of lions and summer grass, and the sound of the matted lion lungs exhaling on the silent noontide, and the smell of meat from the panting, dripping mouths.

The lions stood looking at Shizuo and Izaya Orihara Heiwajima with terrible green-yellow eyes.

"Watch out!" screamed Izaya. The lions came running at them. Izaya bolted and ran. Instinctively, Shizou sprang after him. Outside, in the hall, with the door slammed he was laughing and he was panicking, and they both stood appalled at the other's reaction.

"Shizu-chan!"

"Izaya! You alright?"

"They almost got us!"

"Walls, Izaya, remember; crystal walls, that's all they are. Even though they look so real."

"Did you see? Did you feel? It's too real."

"Now, Izaya..."

"You've got to tell Psyche and Hibiya not to read any more on Africa."

"Of course - of course." He stroked his hair.

"Promise?"

"Sure."

"And lock the machine for a few days until I get my nerves settled."

"You know how difficult Hibiya is about that. When I punished him a month ago by locking the nursery for even a few hours - the tantrum he threw! And Psyche too. They live for the washing machine."

"It's got to be locked, that's all there is to it."

"All right." Reluctantly he locked the huge door.

"You've been working too hard. You need a rest."

"I don't know - I don't know," he said, sitting down in a chair that immediately began to rock and comfort him. "Maybe I don't have enough to do. Maybe I have time to think too much. Why don't we shut the whole house off for a few days and take a vacation?"

"You mean you want to fry my eggs for me?"

"Yes." He nodded.

"And dam my socks?"

"Yes." A frantic, watery-eyed nodding.

"And sweep the house?"

"Yes, yes yes~''

"But I thought that's why we bought this house, so we wouldn't have to do anything?"

"That's just it. I feel like I don't belong here. The house is wife and mother now, and nursemaid. Can I compete with an African sushi land?"

"Can I give a bath and scrub the children as efficiently or quickly as the automatic scrub bath can? I cannot. And it isn't just me. It's you. You've been awfully nervous lately."

"I guess I been smoking too much."

"You look as if you didn't know what to do with yourself in this house, either. You smoke a little more every morning and drink a little more every afternoon and need a little more sedative every night. You're beginning to feel unnecessary too."

"Am I?" He paused and tried to feel into himself to see what was really there.

"Oh, Shizu-chan." He looked beyond him, at the washing machine door. "Those lions can't get out of there, can they?"

He looked at the door and saw it tremble as if something had jumped against it from the other side. "Of course not," he said.

At dinner they ate alone, for Psyche and Hibiya were at a special plastic carnival across town and had televised home to say they'd be late, to go ahead eating. So Shizou, bemused, sat watching the dining-room table produce warm dishes of food from its mechanical interior.

"We forgot my pudding," he said.

"Sorry," said a small voice within the table, and a cup of pudding appeared. As for the washing machine, thought Shizuo Heiwjima, it won't hurt for the children to be locked out of it awhile. T

oo much of anything isn't good for anyone. And it was clearly indicated that the children had been spending a little too much time on Africa. That sun. He could feel it on his neck, still, like a hot paw. And the lions. And the smell of blood.

Remarkable how the machine caught the telepathic emanations of the children's minds and created life to fill their every desire.

The children thought lions, and there were lions. The children thought zebras, and there were zebras. Sun—sun. Giraffes—giraffes. Death and death. That last. He chewed tastelessly on the meat that the table had cut for him.

Death thoughts.

They were awfully young, Psyche and Hibiya, for death thoughts. Or, no, you were never too young, really. Long before you knew what death was you were wishing it on someone else.

When you were two years old you were shooting people with cap pistols. But this - the long, hot African sushi land-the awful death in the jaws of a lion. And repeated again and again.

"Where are you going?" He didn't answer Izaya. Preoccupied, he let the lights glow softly on ahead of him, extinguish behind him as he padded to the nursery door. He listened against it. Far away, a lion roared.

He unlocked the door and opened it.

Just before he stepped inside, he heard a faraway scream.

And then another roar from the lions, which subsided quickly. He stepped into Africa.

How many times in the last year had he opened this door and found Wonderland, Alice, the Mock Turtle, or the Mad Hatter, or Psychedelic Dreams that gave lullabies at night. How often had he seen Pegasus flying in the sky ceiling, or seen fountains of red fireworks, or heard angel voices singing. But now, is yellow hot Africa, this bake oven with murder in the heat.

Perhaps Izaya was right. Perhaps they needed a little vacation from the fantasy which was growing a bit too real for ten-year-old children. It was all right to exercise one's mind with gymnastic fantasies, but when the lively child mind settled on one pattern... ?

It seemed that, at a distance, for the past month, he had heard lions roaring, and smelled their strong odor seeping as far away as his study door. But, being busy, he had paid it no attention.

Shizuo Heiwajima stood on the African grassland alone. The lions looked up from their feeding, watching him.

The only flaw to the illusion was the open door through which he could see his wife, far down the dark hall, like a framed picture, eating her dinner abstractedly.

"Go away," he said to the lions. They did not go. He knew the principle of the room exactly. You sent out your thoughts. Whatever you thought would appear.

"Let's have Alice in Wonderland," he snapped. The sushiland remained; the lions remained. "Come on, room! I demand Alice!" he said.

Nothing happened. The lions mumbled in their baked pelts. "Alice!" He went back to dinner.

"The fool room's out of order," he said. "It won't respond."

"Or-"

"Or what?"

"Or it can't respond," said Izaya, "because the children have thought about Africa and lions and killing so many days that the room's in a rut."

"Could be."

"Or Hibiya's set it to remain that way."

"Set it?"

"He may have got into the machinery and fixed something."

"Hibiya doesn't know machinery."

"He's a wise one for ten. That I.Q. of his -"

"Nevertheless -"

"Hello, Mom. Hello, Dad." The Heiwajimas turned.

Psyche and Hibya were coming in the front door, cheeks like peppermint candy, eyes like bright pink and gold agate marbles, a smell of ozone on their jumpers from their trip in the helicopter.

"You're just in time for supper," said both parents.

"We're full of strawberry ice cream and cotton candy," said the children, holding hands. "But we'll sit and watch."

"Yes, come tell us about the washing machine too," said Shizuo.

The twins blinked at him and then at each other. "Washing machine?"

"All about Africa and everything," said Shizuo with false joviality.

"I don't understand," said Hibiya.

"Izaya and I were just traveling through Africa with rod and reel; Tom Tanaka and his Electric Lion, Simba" said Shizuo.

"There's no Africa in the washing machine," said Hibiya simply.

"Oh, come now, Hibiya. We know better."

"I don't remember any Africa," said Hibiya to Psyche. "Do you?"

"No."

"Run see and come tell." He obeyed

"Psyche, come back here!" said Shizou, but he was gone. The house lights followed him like a flock of fireflies. Too late, he realized he had forgotten to lock the washing machine's door after his last inspection.

"Psyche'll look and come tell us," said Hibiya.

"He doesn't have to tell me. I've seen it."

"I'm sure you're mistaken, Father."

"I'm not, Hibiya. Come along now." But Psyche was back.

"It's not Africa," he said breathlessly.

"We'll see about this," said Shizou, and they all walked down the hall together and opened the machine door.

There was a green, lovely forest, a lovely river, a purple mountain, high voices singing, and Anri, lovely and mysterious, lurking in the trees with colorful flights of butterflies, like animated bouquets, lingering in her long hair.

The African sushiland was gone. The lions were gone. Only Anri was here now, singing a song so beautiful that it brought tears to your eyes. Shizuo looked in at the changed scene.

"Go to bed," he said to the children. They opened their mouths.

"You heard me," he said. They went off to the air closet, where a wind sucked them like brown leaves up the flue to their slumber rooms.

Shizuo Heiwajima walked through the singing glade and picked up something that lay in the comer near where the lions had been.

He walked slowly back to Izaya. "What is that?" she asked.

"An old bowtie of mine," he said. He showed it to him.

The smell of hot grass was on it and the smell of a lion. There were drops of saliva on it, it bad been chewed, and there were blood smears on both sides. He closed the washing machine door and locked it, tight.

In the middle of the night he was still awake and he knew Izaya was too. "Do you think Psyche changed it?" he said at last, in the dark room.

"Of course."

"Made it from a veldt into a forest and put Anri there instead of lions?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"I don't know. But it's staying locked until I find out."

"How did your bowtie get there?"

"I don't know anything," he said, "except that I'm beginning to be sorry we bought that room for the children. If children are neurotic at all, a room like that"

"It's supposed to help them work off their neuroses in a healthful way."

"I'm starting to wonder." He stared at the ceiling.

"We've given the children everything they ever wanted. Is this our reward—secrecy, disobedience?"

"Who was it said, 'Children are carpets, they should be stepped on occasionally'? We've never lifted a hand. They're insufferable—let's admit it. They come and go when they like; they treat us as if we were offspring. They're spoiled and we're spoiled."

"They've been acting funny ever since you forbade them to take the rocket to New York a few months ago."

"They're not old enough to do that alone, I explained."

"Nevertheless, I've noticed they've been decidedly cool toward us since."

"I think I'll have Doc Shinra come tomorrow morning to have a look at Africa."

"But it's not Africa now, it's Green Mansions country and Anri."

"I have a feeling it'll be Africa again before then."

A moment later they heard the screams.

Two screams.

Two people screaming from downstairs.

And then a roar of lions.

"Psyche and Hibiya aren't in their rooms," said Izaya.

He lay in his bed with his beating heart. "No," he said.

"They've broken into the washing machine."

"Those screams—they sound familiar."

"Do they?"

"Yes, awfully." And although their beds tried very hard, the two adults couldn't be rocked to sleep for another hour.

A smell of cats was in the night air.

"Father?" said Hibiya.

"Yes."

Hibiya looked at his shoes. He never looked at his father any more, nor at his mother.

"You aren't going to lock up the washing machine for good, are you?"

"That all depends."

"On what?" snapped Hibiya.

"On you and your brother. If you intersperse this Africa with a little variety—oh I don't know, Sweden, or Denmark or China -"

"I thought we were free to play as we wished."

"You are, within reasonable bounds."

"What's wrong with Africa, Father?"

"Oh, so now you admit you have been conjuring up Africa, do you?"

"I wouldn't want the nursery locked up," said Hibiya coldly. "Ever."

"Matter of fact, we're thinking of turning the whole house off for about a month. Live sort of a carefree one-for-all existence."

"That sounds dreadful! Would I have to tie my own shoes instead of letting the shoe tier do it? And brush my own teeth and comb my hair and give myself a bath?"

"It would be fun for a change, don't you think?"

"No, it would be horrid. I didn't like it when you took out the picture painter last month."

"That's because I wanted you to learn to paint all by yourself, son."

"I don't want to do anything but look and listen and smell; what else is there to do?"

"All right, go play in Africa."

"Will you shut off the house sometime soon?"

"We're considering it."

"I don't think you'd better consider it any more, Father."

"I won't have any threats from my son!"

"Very well." And Hibiya strolled off to the washing machine.

"Am I on time?" said Shinra.

"Breakfast?" asked Shizou.

"Thanks, had some. What's the trouble?"

"Shinra you're a psychologist."

"I should hope so."

"Well, then, have a look at our washing machine. You saw it a year ago when you dropped by; did you notice anything peculiar about it then?"

"Can't say I did; the usual violences, a tendency toward a slight paranoia here or there, usual in children because they feel persecuted by parents constantly, but, oh, really nothing." They walked down the hall.

"I locked the washing machine up," Shizuo explained, "and the children broke back into it during the night. I let them stay so they could form the patterns for you to see."

There was a terrible screaming from machine.

"There it is," said Shizuo.

"See what you make of it." They walked in on the children without rapping. The screams had faded. T

he lions were feeding.

"Run outside a moment, children," said Shizuo.

"No, don't change the mental combination. Leave the walls as they are. Get!"

With the children gone, the two men stood studying the lions clustered at a distance, eating with great relish whatever it was they had caught.

"I wish I knew what it was," said Shizuo.

"Sometimes I can almost see. Do you think if I brought high-powered binoculars here and -" Shinra laughed dryly.

"Hardly." He turned to study all four walls.

"How long has this been going on?"

"A little over a month."

"It certainly doesn't feel good."

"I want facts, not feelings."

"My dear Shizuo-kun, a psychologist never saw a fact in his life. He only hears about feelings; vague things. This doesn't feel good, I tell you. Trust my hunches and my instincts. I have a nose for something bad. This is very bad. My advice to you is to have the whole damn room torn down and your children brought to me every day during the next year for treatment."

"Is it that bad?"

"I'm afraid so. One of the original uses of these machines was so that we could study the patterns left on the walls by the child's mind, study at our leisure, and help the child. In this case, however, the room has become a channel toward-destructive thoughts, instead of a release away from them."

"Didn't you sense this before?"

"I sensed only that you had spoiled your children more than most. And now you're letting them down in some way. What way?"

"I wouldn't let them go to New York."

"What else?"

"I've taken a few machines from the house and threatened them, a month ago, with closing up the nursery unless they did their homework. I did close it for a few days to show I meant business."

"Ah, ha!"

"Does that mean anything?"

"Everything. Where before they had a Santa Claus now they have a Scrooge. Children prefer Santas. You've let this room and this house replace you and your wife in your children's affections."

" This room is their mother and father, far more important in their lives than their real parents. And now you come along and want to shut it off. No wonder there's hatred here. You can feel it coming out of the sky."

" Feel that sun. Shizuo, you'll have to change your life. Like too many others, you've built it around creature comforts. Why, you'd starve tomorrow if something went wrong in your kitchen. You wouldn't know how to tap an egg. Nevertheless, turn everything off. Start new. It'll take time. But we'll make good children out of bad in a year, wait and see."

"But won't the shock be too much for the children, shutting the room up abruptly, for good?"

"I don't want them going any deeper into this, that's all." The lions were finished with their red feast.

The lions were standing on the edge of the clearing watching the two men.

"Now I'm feeling persecuted," said Shinra.

"Let's get out of here. I never have cared for these damned rooms. Make me nervous."

"The lions look real, don't they?" said Shizuo.

"I don't suppose there's any way—"

"What?"

"—that they could become real?"

"Not that I know."

"Some flaw in the machinery, a tampering or something?"

"No." They went to the door.

"I don't imagine the room will like being turned off," said the father.

"Nothing ever likes to die - even a room."

"I wonder if it hates me for wanting to switch it off?"

"Paranoia is thick around here today," said Shinra.

"You can follow it like a spoor. Hello." He bent and picked up a bloody knife.

"This yours?"

"No." Shizou's face was rigid. "It belongs to Izaya."

They went to the fuse box together and threw the switch that killed the washing machine.

The two children were in hysterics. They screamed and pranced and threw things.

They yelled and sobbed and swore and jumped at the furniture.

"You can't do that to the machine, you can't!''

"Now, children."

The children flung themselves onto a couch, weeping.

"Shizu-chan," said Izaya, "turn on the machine, just for a few moments. You can't be so abrupt."

"No."

"You can't be so cruel..."

"Izaya, it's off, and it stays off. And the whole damn house dies as of here and now. The more I see of the mess we've put ourselves in, the more it sickens me. We've been contemplating our mechanical, electronic navels for too long. My God, how we need a breath of honest air!"

And he marched about the house turning off the voice clocks, the stoves, the heaters, the shoe shiners, the shoe lacers, the body scrubbers and swabbers and massagers, and every other machine be could put his hand to.

The house was full of dead bodies, it seemed. It felt like a mechanical cemetery.

So silent. None of the humming hidden energy of machines waiting to function at the tap of a button.

"Don't let them do it!" wailed Peter at the ceiling, as if he was talking to the house, the washing machine.

"Don't let Father kill everything." He turned to his father. "Oh, I hate you!"

"Insults won't get you anywhere."

"I wish you were dead!"

"We were, for a long while. Now we're going to really start living. Instead of being handled and massaged, we're going to live."

Psyche was still crying and Hibiya joined him again.

"Just a moment, just one moment, just another moment of the washing machine," they wailed.

"Shizu-chan," said Izaya, "it can't hurt."

"All right—all right, if they'll just shut up. One minute, mind you, and then off forever."

"Daddy, Daddy, Daddy!" sang the children, smiling with wet faces.

"And then we're going on a vacation. Shinra is coming back in half an hour to help us move out and get to the airport. I'm going to dress. You turn the washing machine on for a minute, Izaya, just a minute."

And the three of them went babbling off while he let himself be vacuumed upstairs through the air flue and set about dressing himself.

A minute later Izaya appeared. "I'll be glad when we get away," he sighed.

"Did you leave them in the nursery?"

"I wanted to dress too. Oh, that horrid Africa. What can they see in it?"

"Well, in five minutes we'll be on our way to Ikebukuro. Lord, how did we ever get in this house? What prompted us to buy a nightmare?"

"Pride, money, foolishness."

"I think we'd better get downstairs before those kids get engrossed with those damned beasts again."

Just then they heard the children calling, "Daddy, Mommy, come quick - quick!" They went downstairs in the air flue and ran down the hall. The children were nowhere in sight.

"Psyche? Hibiya!" They ran into the washing machine. The sushi land was empty save for the lions waiting, looking at them.

"Hibiya, Psyche?" The door slammed.

"Psyche, Hibiya!" Shizuo Heiwajima and Izaya Orihara Heiwajima whirled and ran back to the door.

"Open the door!" cried Shizuo, trying the knob.

"Why, they've locked it from the outside! Hibiya!" He beat at the door. "Open up!"

He heard Hibiya's voice outside, against the door.

"Don't let them switch off the nursery and the house," he was saying.

Shizuo and Izaya beat at the door.

"Now, don't be ridiculous, children. It's time to go. Shinra'll be here in a minute and..."

And then they heard the sounds. The lions on three sides of them, in the yellow veldt grass, padding through the dry straw, rumbling and roaring in their throats.

The lions.

Shizou looked at Izaya and they turned and looked back at the beasts edging slowly forward crouching, tails stiff. Mr. and Mrs. Heiwajima screamed.

And suddenly they realized why those other screams had sounded familiar.

"Well, here I am," said Shinra in the washing machine doorway,

"Oh, hello." He stared at the two children seated in the center of the open glade eating a little picnic lunch.

Beyond them was the water hole and the yellow sushi land; above was the hot sun. He began to perspire.

"Where are your father and mother?"

The children looked up and smiled. "Oh, they'll be here directly."

"Good, we must get going." At a distance Shinra saw the lions fighting and clawing and then quieting down to feed in silence under the shady trees.

He squinted at the lions with his hand tip to his eyes. Now the lions were done feeding.

They moved to the water hole to drink. A shadow flickered over Shinra's hot face. Many shadows flickered.

The vultures were dropping down the blazing sky.

"A cup of tea?" asked Psyche in the silence.

**end c:**


End file.
